MSE Massachusetts 4X - anyone?

[fscottee 10]

If anyone has Mass 4X would you be so kind to offer up a couple very low (50 -100 feet alt) shots of the Lowell, Massachusetts area? 

[fscottee 10]

Hmmm must be quite a popular scenery...

[fscottee 10]

I'm just looking for something like this, like around the Aiken St bridge for comparison.  228 ft alt.

 

[hjsmuc 194]

Hi fscottee, I don't have MSE Mass 4K but curious with what scenery you recorded the screenshot you posted.

[fscottee 10]

It's Bing at 60cm.    Working on a little scenery for the area and was wanting to see how MSE4x compared to Bing.

[hjsmuc 194]

Like that Bing shot. Looks more colorful to me than what I saw from MSE.

[tonywob 2,159]

I tried generating this tile in X-Plane using both Bing and USGS imagery (Which I think MSE uses). Bing is vastly superior in colour and contrast

[fscottee 10]

Ok thanks.  Would have saved me the time of doing water masking which I hate and will probably just leave it out.

[Christopher Low 1,178]

Do the MegaScenery Earth guys bother with watermasking? They certainly didn't with MSE2 Ireland.

[Clutch Cargo 112]

From what I have in the past they tend to watermask large bodies of water only.  So areas look good - some not so good. 

[SAAB340 28]

Think I managed to hover the Harrier to the correct spot. No slewing here  :smile:

This is what Massachusetts 4x looks like:

 

And if anyone is interested, this is what MSE Ultra-Res Boston looks like:

 

As you can see, it uses the same source data, but the water masking is different. Well, MSEs water masking until now has basically been to take the default vector data for the water and make the textures gradually transparent around that. That way they could through minimal work have the photo scenery textures blend in with the default water textures fairly nicely, however we also got horrible bleed through of the default ground textures around the water, but the join was fairly gradual. The x4 uses different vector data from default to make the textures see through for water, and they go from fully transparent to not transparent at all in a few feet instead of a few hundred feet.

 

 

Here is what the MSE2.0 Massachusetts look like:

 

We can clearly see that it uses different source data. And because that source data is a lot more washed out in color here, the default bleed through is absolutely horrible.

 

 

Finally here is the Default FSX scenery with autogen: 

 

If you save the images and blink between them its very clear where the default scenery is bleeding through.

[fscottee 10]

Thanks for posting those.  It's a shame that MSE can't just be honest about the resolution they advertise.  The MSE4X looks like 1 meter and the MSE2 looks like 1.5 meter.  The bing is 50cm, (but FSX only displays at 60 cm).

 

But the biggest indicator of resolution is the download size of the scenery.  ALl this stuff about special compression techniques are hogwash.  When you compress textures, you lose quality, period.  So if you compress 50 cm textures, they are no longer 50 cm.

[SAAB340 28]

Yeah, that Bing scenery of yours is way better resolution, regardless of colors. So it is using the same LOD level as the MSE x4. Interesting.

 

The MSE UltraRes is actually slightly crisper compared to MSE x4 if you disregard the extra bleed through of default scenery here. If you look closer in the white lines in the red (is it a park?) in the top middle its clear that UltraRes is slightly better detail. It's clearly based on the same source so it must be that "optimised" 2x compression that is showing its ugly face. 

 

I'm no developer and don't know much about scenery scale but is the actual scale we see not depending on the latitude we are at? The textures are saved at a certain LOD level and the LOD level UltraRes and x4 scenery have gives a scale between about 70cm per pixel down in Key West and about 50cm per pixel up in northern Minnesota?

[SlowFlyer 5]

Just from judging the screenshots in this thread, the Bing screenshot looks amazing to me. The Bing photo to me virtually looks to have a great 3-D effect; with its clearly defined shadows, the bright colors, and higher resolution. 

I would consider buying photo scenery if it looked like the Bing screenshot.

 

Although I like the idea of "real" scenery and being able to identify the area I live in, the washed out look, the blurry images that even MSE 4X offers, doesn't 'totally' interest me, but I since I live in Massachusetts, I have been looking at it.

[Clutch Cargo 112]

The Bing looks like 30cm to me

[SAAB340 28]

SlowFlyer, the MSE UltraRes cities offers quite a good 3-D feel when you fly around at fairly low altitudes. It's all about scenery resolution vs altitude. Obviously it gets too blurry down at 200' but its not bad down to about 500' AGL. Here's west of Boston (Arlington?) just under 1000' MSL or about 650' AGL.

 

First MSE Massachusetts x4:

 

MSE Boston Ultra Res

 

MSE Massachusetts 2.0

 

Default FSX textures

 

Here you can really see the much better resolution in MSE UltraRes Vs MSE x4. All due to that 'optimized' compression. The same source data clearly gives way less resolution in MSE x4 even though they are both advertised as 50cm... Never the less, MSE x4 is still a lot better than MSE 2.0.

 

You can also see the results of the different way they do water blending, but the MSE team have announced that they are gonna change how they do it in x4 and are holding further releases until they've sorted that out and they will update Florida x4 and Massachusetts x4 with the new way as well. Gonna be interesting to see how that looks.

 

The MSE 2.0 stuff is too low res for a good feeling at 650' AGL, but higher up it doesn't look too bad actually. I've had hours/days of fun with it. The default FSX textures are not too bad resolution wise, unfortunately their not very accurate to the real world.  

 

I'd love to get the MSE x4 scenery with the same actual resolution as the Ultra Res scenery. The source data clearly is there and yeah, it will be taking up much more space, but I rather have the resolution please. As it has been said, the size of the scenery seems to be very much in line with the resolution. More compression leads to worse resolution. MSE Massachusetts 2.0 takes up 5.8GB on disk while MSE Massachusetts x4 'only' takes 8.8GB. There's the reason for not getting the 4x resolution.

 

Boston UltraRes in the meanwhile takes up 14.6GB but it doesn't cover the whole of MA, but covers parts of NH, CT and RI as well. The .bgls in MA, NH, CT and RI fully covered by Boston UltraRes take up 4.21GB.. The UltraRes scenery clearly takes up more space than the x4.

 

Did you want any more shots of the Lowell area fscottee?

[Christopher Low 1,178]

In addition to decent photoscenery of Northern Ireland, I would also love to see properly watermasked (and more consistently coloured) 60cm resolution photoscenery of England and Wales. The difference in resolution between the current 1.2m per pixel England/Wales scenery and the 60cm Scotland scenery can be quite dramatic at times.

 

Just out of curiosity, is anyone here running the UK2000 VFR Airfields packages with the MSE2 England and Wales photoscenery? If so, how well do they align? When I download higher resolution photo base images from Bing, there is a slight offset when compared to the VFR GenX scenery that results in me having to adjust most of the elements of the airfields/airports that are affected. Rather annoying to say the least.

[fscottee 10]

No I'm good on the shot you posted. Just wanted to see how it compared.

[SlowFlyer 5]

SAAB340, thank you for the detailed information and screen shots. 

[Pugilist2 313]

 

I'd love to get the MSE x4 scenery with the same actual resolution as the Ultra Res scenery.

 

Me too. Thanks for the comparison. 

[slip-stream 3]

Thanks for posting those.  It's a shame that MSE can't just be honest about the resolution they advertise.  The MSE4X looks like 1 meter and the MSE2 looks like 1.5 meter.  The bing is 50cm, (but FSX only displays at 60 cm).

 

But the biggest indicator of resolution is the download size of the scenery.  ALl this stuff about special compression techniques are hogwash.  When you compress textures, you lose quality, period.  So if you compress 50 cm textures, they are no longer 50 cm.

FSX only displays @ 60cm? Complete rubbish.